Tag Archives: PUBG

Here’s the thing: I want to like PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS. I want to understand my friends’s obsession with this game, but for the life of me I can’t. Running around an empty world for 10 minutes to be sniped by hackers or just in general isn’t too much fun in my book. It was suggested that maybe I just wasn’t attune to the game enough, that more time practicing would help me see how fun this is. Or better yet, squad-ing with them would make the game more fun. And in this somewhat true, rolling with three others friends will always be more fun than the lone pubby whose lunch for someone’s chicken dinner.

At first I dismissed Fortnite, like I’m sure a lot of PUBG players probably still do, as a poor man’s imitator. You fly into an island map, you parachute to a location of your choice and you stay alive as long as possible. All similar and core functions of PUBG. However Fortnite adds complication where PUBG is pure simplicity and I’m sure that’s where many fans stop.

To be fair I’m not one for competitive shooters. Perhaps now as an adult the last thing I need is additional stress on top of managing life, and PUBG can be quite fucking stressful. PUBG’s lessons are slow and hard, and vary depending on which map the game tries to push (Miramar sucks, obvs). This is all to say, I felt like I was chasing a high that yet to come. It wasn’t even about the winning moreso it was just feeling like I was just doing something other than running and hiding.

It’s counter-intuitive to a PUBG player to consider creating a wooden wall as cover versus finding the nearest thing for cover. Or even more so counter intuitive to build towers to post up in. Fortnite encourages general creation over circle management: matches are meant to be quick and very messy.

There’s a very different feeling when shit goes down in PUBG:

As opposed to how it goes down in Fortnite:

It’s like talking apples and oranges. Yeah their both fruits but obviously the flavor here is a bit different. Also I have to acknowledge the Fortnite clip was solo while I had a partner in PUBG, but trust me the footage would’ve been more boring without.

To be clear I hate battle royales in general. Even if I find myself craving an occasional match it’s in the same sense that I’m disgusted with myself that I still eat McDonald’s; but drunk at 2a and yeah I’ll get 40 chicken nuggets and large fries, sure. Truth be told, any game can be a lot of fun with the right friends, but PUBG in particular is a tough one to enjoy when cheaters are plenty.

All I’m saying right now is give Fortnite a chance. Yes it’s free, yes it has microtransactions (perhaps less onerous than PUBG’s bullshit crates), and yes it’s visuals are very Team Fortress 2-esqe. It’s also stupid fun and a safe space for PUBG refugees.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS both in Early Access and now in official release, and I still don’t know how to feel about it. I both feel this is the most obnoxious fucking game I’ve played to date and also one of the most intense, often switching off between the two intermittently. Initially I wanted to write some kind of review, but then I quickly realized it was both a dumb and pointless. Instead, I thought it would be more constructive to document the early experience of the game in the eternal quest to “get gud” as I’m often told. Especially since there is inherent comedy in watching futile attempts to succeed.

There is a very specific sense of fragility to this game. The player knows there is no safety anywhere. No matter how much equipment you gather, how suped up your gun may be, how much bullet-proof padding or how many kills you’ve recently acquired there is always the lingering knowledge your (digital) life is forfeit at literally any moment. Lately, it seems, thanks to Chinese hackers. In many ways, PUBG is legitimately both the most obnoxious and the most frightening game I’ve played yet.

Ultimately words don’t do justice to prove how much I suck. So, I’ve distilled my early experiences with the game into a small video. I’m sorry in advance.